Solve The Mystery
When Louisa finds a map of a brand new house, she thinks her family is moving far away!
“Ihope Grandma likes my card,” Louisa chatted with her cat as she set down her crayons. She picked up the card and held it to close to her face to inspect it. “Her birthday is this weekend, and I want it to be the best, most beautiful card ever. What do you think, Whiskers?” She flashed the card in front of Whiskers, who let out a meow in approval.
“Okay, good. I hope she likes it as much as you do!” Louisa laughed. “Now all I need to do is sign it before walking over to Grandma’s house to stick it in her mailbox. That’s the perk of living one street away!” She set down her card down on the kitchen counter and started searching for a pen. She opened one drawer, then another, then another without success.
“Whiskers, did you hide all the pens?” she teased. “I can’t find a single one.” Louisa pulled open a fourth drawer, but instead of a pen, she found a map of a house’s floorplan stuffed inside. She had almost tossed the map aside, but then a room with “Louisa” written across it caught her eye.
Louisa’s brows furrowed in confusion.“what’s this?” she asked aloud as she scanned the map. It showed the layout of a house’s upstairs and downstairs
floors. Each room was labeled: One room said “Parents’ bedroom,” one said “Louisa’s bedroom” and there was even a bedroom labeled for Louisa’s older sister, Ryann, who spent most of the year living away at college. The set-up looked nothing like the layout of Louisa’s actual home, so why would her parents have a map of a random house?
Suddenly, Louisa began to put the pieces together. Her heart sank.
“Are Mom and Dad trying to move?!” she gasped. Her mind started to race.
Why would Mom and Dad want to move? she frantically thought. Our house is perfect. It’s where I grew up. It’s where I held my first-ever sleepover. It’s where I learned how to ride my bike. It’s so close to Grandma!
Louisa’s eyes welled up with tears just thinking about moving away from her grandma.
“Whiskers, this can’t be happening,” Louisa stammered. “This is so unfair! How could Mom and Dad
keep such a huge secret from us? I need to figure out what’s going on.” Louisa picked up her cat and started looking around the house for moving clues. She noticed the living room was filled with large piles of clothes and got a little concerned, but she tried to stay positive. Maybe Mom and Dad are just doing one of their cleaning sprees again, she thought. They love those. When Louisa realized that all of the clothes were Ryann’s, she breathed a sigh of relief. Her sister was getting ready to head back to college to finish up her degree in interior design, so it made sense for her to be packing. The rest of the house looked totally normal … until Louisa made her way to the garage. There, she found stacks of cardboard boxes piled up near her dad’s golf clubs. “Those are moving boxes,” Louisa whispered to herself. “And there are way too many for them to just be Ryann’s, even with all her art supplies and the summer school projects she’s been working on.” Louisa was trying to stop herself from crying when she noticed the arm of a stuffed animal hanging over the trash can. She rushed over to the garbage bins to check it out. “Oh, my gosh,” Louisa sniffled. “These are all of my childhood toys. Mom and Dad are really packing everything up!” Louisa let out a loud sob as she ran back inside the house. She could hear both of her parents talking in the hallway upstairs, so she went to confront them. They looked startled as Louisa bolted toward them. “Sweetie, what’s wrong?” her dad asked. “We’re … moving … away … from … Grandma,” Louisa cried, barely able to get a word out. “What?” her mom questioned. “Louisa, what are you talking about?” “I found the map of the new house,” Louisa whimpered. “And I saw all of the boxes in the garage. You’ve even started tossing out some of my old toys that were in the basement. I just don’t understand. I don’t see how you could find a better house than this! What will Grandma do without us nearby?” “Map of the new house?” her mom repeated in a confused tone. “What new house?”
“If we’re moving away from Grandma, that’s news to me,” her dad added.
Louisa wiped her tears and looked back at her parents, puzzled. “Huh? We’re not moving?”
“Louisa, where did you ever get the idea that we’re moving?” her parents asked.
Louisa led them back to the kitchen, where she pulled the map out of the drawer.
“See? This is a map of an entirely different house. You guys even marked which bedroom will be mine and which will be Ryann’s.”
Her parents studied the map for a few second before her dad let out a laugh. “What’s so funny?” Louisa demanded. “Oh, Louisa! We’re not moving.” “Then what’s this map for?” she asked.